


Bless This Mess

by sarkywoman



Category: Andromeda (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-24
Updated: 2010-07-24
Packaged: 2019-03-25 03:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13825941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarkywoman/pseuds/sarkywoman
Summary: Dylan comes to realise that there is method in Harper's madness and that maybe he likes his order to come with a little chaos flavouring.





	Bless This Mess

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2010 for the andromeda_fans bingo. The prompt used was 'Messy'. In the process of cross-posting old work.

Dylan's day was full of surprises. The unpleasant kind. It began small – little irritating ship malfunctions here and there. As the day went on the surprises became more significant – Beka and Trance suddenly departing with very vague explanations but sincere promises to return shortly. Eventually the surprises were more like shocks – a deadly group of Nietzchean warriors boarding the ship looking for Tyr and willing to murder anyone else they found.

Luckily, nobody on Dylan's crew was more resourceful than the small, blond engineer currently helping the Captain fight through a horde of angry Drago-Kasov. Harper claimed to have just the thing to stop the enemy in their tracks – a particular nanobot infection he had been working on that specifically targeted Nietzcheans. He swore it was non-lethal, that it just messed with their hand-eye co-ordination and nervous systems temporarily. 

So the two were trekking down to the machine shop to release the nanobot strain on the invaders. Dylan had honestly expected to be 'escorting' Harper down there, protecting him. Sure, the young man was scrappy, but he was no soldier. As it turned out, he was no brain in glass jar either.

The Captain leant against the wall panting after their last encounter with a band of five Nietzcheans, watching Harper spit on the floor. “Did you just...” he couldn't finish the question.

Harper wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, still wrinkling his nose distastefully. “Bite an Uber? Yeah, I know, disgusting. You don't know where they've been. Trust me, I've eaten worse.”

“You tore a chunk out of him,” Dylan observed, looking at the bloodied warrior on the floor who had been finished off by Dylan's forcelance.

“What, is that 'unacceptable conduct'?” Harper asked sarcastically. “Isn't it in the Commonwealth's Big Book of Fair Fighting?”

“I, uh...” Since adopting the Maru crew Dylan had been left speechless more often than ever before. “It's just a bit...savage. Barbaric, even.”

Harper grinned widely, taking that as a twisted compliment. His teeth were slightly stained red. “That's why you love me. Come on.”

They jogged through the corridors once more, hoping not to run into any more of the attack force. “I'm not sure it is,” Dylan said eventually.

“Huh?” Harper was thrown by the apparent non-sequitur.

“Why I love you. I don't think it's the savagery.”

Harper looked at him as though he was insane. “Dylan, is this really the time?”

“I don't see why not,” Dylan reasoned as they continued to run. “But seriously, though I would never change you I don't think I'm drawn to your barbaric side. I mean, I'm as much of a thrill-seeker as the next guy...”

“...Sure, if the next guy's a power-tripping masochist out to fight the Universe,” Harper muttered before beaming as cutely as he could to try and take the sting out of his words. Dylan ignored him completely.

“...but at the end of the day you can't beat a big dose of civilisation. Order. Peace. Harmony.”

Harper frowned. “You've been hanging out with Rev too much.” He clambered down another ladder to the engineering deck and Dylan followed. “You know you'd get bored without a little anarchy. Or at least the illusion of it. Sure, nobody wants to live in a world with constant fires and murder, but nobody wants a world where they can't scream a little, if they feel like it.”

They opened the door of the machine shop, providing Dylan with a visual cue for his argument. Clothes were tangled with machinery, credit chips lay in plates of half-eaten mouldy food, flexis poked out from under a makeshift bed crammed under a desk. “Now, this is exactly what I'm talking about,” Dylan said with a sigh. “I love you, but this isn't a contributing factor.”

He moved to step into the warzone when Harper grabbed his arm. “Wait.”

Dylan raised his eyebrows questioningly at the engineer, but Harper's blue eyes were serious and focused intently on looking around the room. “Harper, what's wrong?”

“Someone's been in here.” From the grave tone of voice, it was obvious who he believed that 'someone' to be.

“How can you tell?” A bomb going off would probably not make much of a dent in that mess.

“Things have been moved.”

Dylan shrugged. “It could have been the droids.”

“No. They don't have permission. Rommie has to request permission to do it herself and even then I only allow it when I'm going off-ship for a day at least.”

Dylan had not known that, but it explained why Rommie always cleaned Harper's working and living areas when he went away for any amount of time. Then a thought occurred. “Wait. Are you telling me you know where everything is in this...pit?”

Harper nodded and took a hesitant step into the room. “It's easy for people to hide signs they were there if you have a clear place for everything. You gotta mix it up a little, make it so as they won't know where to put something down once they've picked it up. Nobody could make a diagram of this room for infiltration purposes. Not like Tyr's. You know I've swiped every single one of Tyr's guns for maintenance and put them back and he hasn't even noticed? Not all at once of course, one at a time.”

“Why?” Dylan asked, perplexed and unable to take his eyes off of his lover as the smaller man crept amongst the rubbish scattered over the floor.

“Shits and giggles,” Harper answered casually. “And to stop his weaponry from frying him while he's got our backs.”

That was when it clicked. “There's a reason,” Dylan realised. “You always have a reason. A sensible one I mean, behind the joke.”

“Method in the madness,” Harper quipped.

“Order in the chaos,” Dylan replied, smiling warmly. 

Harper picked a small box up from the floor in the middle of the room and returned to the doorway, hopping over the piles of junk between him and Dylan. “ _That_ is why you love me,” he said with a grin. “And because I'm a freakin' genius.” He held up the small metallic box triumphantly.

“It wasn't damaged when they came in here?”

Harper shook his head. “Nah, I think they were just happy to plant the shock mines here there and everywhere in the hopes we'd sizzle ourselves getting in here. They probably planted 'em all over the engineering decks to make sure we didn't come up with anything clever using the overrides.”

“There are shock mines?!” Dylan looked around the room. He couldn't see anything.

“Relax,” Harper said soothingly. “As you saw with my wonderful dance act just then, I can navigate through this dangerous terrain.”

“You mean the part of the ship that you call home.”

Harper nodded sombrely. “The native inhabitants of this deathtrap are wily and dangerous. But very loyal,” he added hastily with an imploring look at his Captain.

“I know that,” Dylan said with a smile. He reached out and took the container from Harper's hands. “So Mr Harper, care to show me how we go about introducing a little anarchy to our attackers?”

Harper beamed. “Sure thing Boss.” His eyes twinkled mischievously. “I'll teach you how to make a mess.”


End file.
